Sullaril had spotted enough mountain peaks and tied enough knots by now that
doing both while talking to the white-robed man posed no problem. The dracnari
had been traveling west when Sullaril met him, on his way from Paavik ("where
we have a painting", he had said cryptically) to Dairuchi through the high pass
in the Southern Mountains; but pleasantly enough, he had turned to slowly walk
for the afternoon with Sullaril, who for his part was happy to rest his wings.

By some blessing of past karma, this fellow hadn't said what all visitors to
the mountains said to Sullaril, and the conversation had been surprisingly
interesting and welcome. The dracnari fondly described his birthplace in the
southern Razines, and then gave an impressed (yet still alarming) breath of
flame when Sullaril showed how familiar he was with all the peaks and other
landmarks of that area. The fact that he consulted one of the many scrolls
peeking out of his pockets (but only one - he knew without searching which
scroll had the information he wanted) didn't deflate the cheerfulness at all.

Discerning a distant peak emerging from behind a nearer mountain to his left,
Sullaril tied a ninth knot, beneath a column of eight others, on a hemp cord
hanging from the rope of the same material that sashed his grey robes closed.
Without pausing he then untied all the knots that had been made on a similar
cord hanging a bit farther to the left. The dracnari watched this process with
undisguised curiosity, as he had all through the conversation with Sullaril,
and glanced at the trill's right side as well: two similar cords hung next to
each other there, the more forward of them with six knots tied in it while its
right-hand neighbor had only one.

Though the white-robed man was intent on respecting his privacy, something in
his pleasant manner made Sullaril a bit less apprehensive than usual. Before he
realized it, he was saying: "You see, I'm counting the mountains."

The dracnari blinked. Which mountains, he asked with a slight stammer.

"All of them. All the mountains that surround the Basin."

A lizard-like tongue came into view inside a mouth shaped like the word "why",
but the word itself never came. Instead the dracnari pondered for a moment, as
thin clouds drifted silently across the sky. Then he nodded to himself, content
with some conclusion, and said to Sullaril: "You know, friend, if you're
interested in geography ..."

The trill froze in place, so suddenly that the dracnari had finished a sentence
before being able to face him again: "... there's a fabulous amount of
information in the Lodestar Athenaeum. If you want, I could -"

But by now he had turned, had seen the defensiveness on Sullaril's face, the
tension that had sprung up between them. To his credit he changed the subject
quickly, but the mood was broken. After a few cursory pleasantries, the white
robes were heading off to the west with a green tail trailing them into the
setting sun, and the trill was a lone scholar once again.

The sinking light, and possibly his sinking disposition as well, convinced
Sullaril that he should stop for the night. With great care, yet with the
efficiency born of repetition, he removed four straight planks of oak from his
backpack and laid them on the ground in a line, meticulously aligning one end
with the last peak he had seen and the other end with a particular mountain on
the path's right side. Next he removed two thick blankets of hemp and laid them
over the two pairs of planks, weighing them down with rocks he found in the
vicinity. Once he was satisfied that the straight line wouldn't be moving
during the night, he ate a quick meal and settled back to sleep.

... The sight of the oakwood, silhouetted against stone by the dusk, reminded
him of the first time he saw the living gates, over three months ago now. He
had been searching for them with mounting frustration, going back and forth
over his tracks and muttering ever-louder curses at his failure, until finally
- taking the saying literally - he began looking under every stone larger than
a roc egg. When one of them actually gave way, he had almost molted in shock,
before following the revealed path to the marvelous gates: supple saplings, one
day to become walnut and oak trees, were twined together to form an archway - an
archway through which, after a moment of silent celebration, he walked with a
satisfied gait, towards the monastery he knew would lie beyond ...

Sullaril awoke before he realized he had fallen asleep. After a brief stretch
and glide around his campsite, he broke his fast while peering intently at the
dozen or so peaks in view, noting precisely which ones lay on the west side of
his line of oak planks. Once he could picture the immediate surroundings with
his eyes shut, he packed up the blankets and the wood and began walking east
again.

The path today was easier than normal and slightly downhill more often than
not, and by noon Sullaril had tied eight new knots in the leftmost cord hanging
from his belt. With a rare smile, he made himself keep walking until two
previously unseen mountain peaks had come into vision in front of him. A bit of
ceremony followed, where the trill tied a seventh knot into the first cord on
his right-hand side and then, warbling a merry tune unconsciously to himself,
untied all of the knots on both cords hanging to his left.

Seventeen hundred mountains so far, he murmured to himself. And what, a third
of the way around? Probably a bit less, as the later-mighty Gloriana River was
still only a fresh stream flitting in and out of view to his left. His pause
grew to an uncharacteristic length as he reflected.

He had named them all at first, with the eagerness created by fresh legs, clean
clothes, and a sense of righteousness. Every new anonymous peak he saw in the
northernmost Razines (and only a few of them were not anonymous, at the time),
he would give a name to: family members, names of birds and types of clouds,
even the mood he was in at the time. His scrolls filled with the names of
mountains, until his fingertips were inkstained seemingly permanently.

Somewhere about the three-hundredth peak, he found himself christening Mount
Weatherfeather ... and realizing with an embarrassed chirp that it was the
second Mount Weatherfeather on his list. After that Sullaril didn't bother
naming the peaks, scholar or no scholar. There's only so much silliness, he
declared to himself as he trudged to the south, that the Basin of Life is
prepared to handle.

Sullaril was shaken out of his reverie by a gaudily-dressed elfen practically
running down the high path. Without preamble he smugly offered to take Sullaril
in tow to some library or other. Sighing to himself, the trill just ignored the
remark - he had learned, through ample experience, to simply pretend that the
mountain winds had drowned out the overture. With scarcely a glance back the
elfen scurried away again.

Although he tied four more knots before making his peculiar camp again that
evening - a commendable fourteen new mountains in all for the day - the elfen's
callous approach had lowered his mood again. Occasionally, like with the
dracnari the day before, some of the people he encountered were willing to
engage in actual conversation. But most of them just wanted to boast about the
culture of their oh-so-glorious homeland.

Sullaril was out here precisely because he didn't want to sit on some
straight-backed chair, copying stale words from a tome that was itself a copy
Lacostian-knew-how-many-times over. He would cluck in disapproval every time he
saw some other wandering scholar, once appropriately independent, fawning after
a member of this city or that commune - lured by the hollow promise of access
to other people's knowledge, and becoming unable as a consequence to learn for
himself.

... The unappealing thought of that kind of dependence on others reminded him,
probably uncharitably he admitted, of the loboshigaru at the monastery. That
they had shied away from him at first didn't bother Sullaril nearly as much as
the fact that they seemed perfectly content defining themselves in terms of one
another. Nevertheless, he had come to Tosha for a reason. So he perversely chose
the most close-knit group of five loboshigaru he could find and began to follow
them everywhere, eating and working and meditating with them.

Whether from eventual acceptance, bemusement, or plain irritation he'd never
know, but the loboshigaru eventually led Sullaril to their Master. At least
they paid him the respect of speaking in the common tongue and announcing him
as a scholar, although the bare chamber they brought him to seemed scarcely
large enough for his wings. The room's only contents were a desk and bookcase
of somber walnut wood, a bed with coarse blankets of hemp - and an enormous
figure in a thin black robe, who slowly turned to face him ...

The clouds were heavier the next day, the path upward-sloping but gradually
widening. With little warning from the gloom-obscured terrain, Sullaril emerged
onto a high plateau with an outstanding view in all directions. To the north he
could glimpse moors and the beginnings of a dark forest in the distance; but of
more immediate concern, the sheer number of mountains in view was stunning.

Brow furrowed under the downy cap that topped his head, Sullaril focused his
mind on the task of keeping the dozens of new peaks straight while he counted
them systematically: the last time he came across a vista such as this, he had
almost spun himself around into disorientation in his excitement, only barely
able to ensure in the end that his count remained exactly accurate.

The fingers on his left hand worked like a magician's, tying and untying knots
as he carefully kept the peaks separated in his mind into the counted and
uncounted. But the skies opened up into a healthy rainstorm, and the most
distant peaks became harder and harder to see. With a chirr of annoyance,
Sullaril hauled out his planks and blankets and marked a boundary in the middle
of the path, then flew upwards to double-check that every mountain behind the
line was accounted for.

So intent was he on his surroundings that Sullaril never noticed, until he was
already landing, the rockeater crossing the path near his equipment. As he
literally stumbled upon the beast, he sensed with a craw-filling dread that the
rockeater was wounded and scared. With a snarl it launched itself at the
twisting trill, and stabbing light blinded him as he shrieked in pain. One wing
hung desperately at Sullaril's side, the other beat like mad, but he couldn't
stay aloft, couldn't find the healing currents, and the slashing teeth were
coming closer....

... He was enveloped by the milky brown eyes, eyes that saw more than he wanted
them to see. Those eyes had calmly regarded him as Sullaril blurted out a poor
shadow of his carefully-prepared speech. Knowledge must be acquired on one's
own, he announced; dependence on others was a flaw, a crutch. Don't tell me
what you know, he demanded: tell me what you don't know, tell me what the
mysteries of Lusternia are, and I'll find the answers for you, myself.

You should speak with the Keepers, Master Quettle had replied, still
unblinking. Each Keeper has a path, and they can help you find the one that
best suits you -. But Sullaril had dashed a priceless book from the desk with a
flap of his wings, snarling No paths! No Keepers! No regurgitation of facts into
my mouth like I'm a hatchling! Independent knowledge, he seethed. That is the
only knowledge worth seeking.

He had felt his heart beating at double speed, had consciously unruffled the
feathers on his chest to calm himself, had feared for a moment that his offense
was so great that the loboshigaru would cast him back into the Northern
Mountains. But the Master displayed no anger, showed perhaps a bit of
disappointment, but revealed nothing in his tone except the desire to
illuminate.

"Very well," Quettle said after a prolonged pause. "There is something that to
my knowledge, no Lusternian knows, perhaps not even the Gods." I will find the
answer, Sullaril vowed instantly. I'm a scholar without limits, without the
fetters of community or the burden of empty lore too easily trusted. Tell me
what you want to know, he pleaded.

"As far as I know," the Master had said serenely, "nobody can say exactly how
many mountains there are in the ring that surrounds the Basin of Life." With a
smile, which to the trill had seemed distorted into a toothy grin, Quettle had
continued: "Perhaps," he had said, "perhaps you can find out." ...

The sun was low in the western sky, and the torrential rainfall had abated.
Sullaril regained consciousness upon a narrow ledge, three wingspans above the
ground where the rockeater had waited for half the day before licking its
wounds and wandering off. Streams of muddy water flowed all around him, and the
majority of the plateau was mired in wide puddles and disturbed earth.

His right wing still throbbed agonizingly at him, but a few cautious flexes
told Sullaril that the major muscles still functioned, now that the shock of
the injury had passed. With a fierce effort he lifted himself up into the
skies, forcing himself to stay aloft until the winds wove their healing magic
upon him. By the time he landed, still tremendously sore but able to go on, his
mind had cleared somewhat as well.

And then he saw them. Four planks of oak, and two hemp blankets. Floating,
separately, in various slowly turning pools of rainwater.

Sullaril stared at them. He opened his mouth, but couldn't find anything to
say. With a jerk he clutched at the knotted cords by his sides, but the number
recorded there couldn't tell him which of the dozens of peaks surrounding him
he had already counted. In the wet sunset every mountain looked the same to
him. He slumped to the ground, his breath coming in chokes.

Anyone else, he repeated to himself. That drac in the white robes. The
self-important elfen. Any one of the other scholars he passed in the hills.
Even a hatchling could have held the blankets down, could have found more rocks
for extra weight, or for extending the lines, could have frightened the
rockeater away, could have administered some elixirs to him. Anyone else. If
they had been here too. Anyone.

The night passed. Sullaril didn't sleep. The morning came. The mountains
remained mute. The knotted cords lay on the muddy ground now. The clouds
drifted by. He sat on the high ledge, closing his eyes with fatigue, then
opening them again with the fading hope that the vista would be familiar, that
the peaks would have sorted themselves into the counted and uncounted. They
hadn't. An eagle grabbed one of the cords in its talons and flew it away to its
growing nest. He sat on the ledge, unmoving, not knowing how to express what he
felt, having nobody to express it to anyway, except himself.

The clouds drifted by. One of them looked, for a moment, like a tail sticking
out of white robes.

Sullaril thought about what he might say, if the cloud were a dracnari.